eco-cultural community, a community defined both through its naturally occurring biosystem and the economic and cultural identity of the people involved therein. The eco-cultural community is neither an ideology to which one
must adhere nor an artificially contrived space that constrains personal identity, distorts the natural environment defined as place, or the culture which derives from the relationship between the two. Rather it is an expansive framework that grows with people’s understanding of themselves, of their community, and of their environment, thereby healing the alienation and dislocation experienced under an empire that embraced
unbridled capitalism and a disregard for the environment. It is a framework that can also address, through new economic relationships and business practices, what has long been an abuse by corporations and large private companies – namely, that, though they owe their position and wealth to the fact they reside in a country of laws, of vast natural resources, of well developed infrastructure, and a strong military, they choose to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, revenue of which could advance the society providing them such opportunity.
It is also a moral and ethical framework. Situating people in a naturally occurring place, you immediately identify and legitimate both the “person” and the “place” as subjects to be acknowledged and honored and not objects to be exploited. And in acknowledging and honoring each, you acknowledge and accord men and women the respect they are due: that they have the capacity to assess facts and form opinions regarding their own personal situation and the environment in which they live. With each having the right to choose who they are and what they want to become in a community of others residing in a particular place, and to have their ideas and arguments tested and tempered in a community of others who also reside not only within that space but within the global community, they would develop a character welcoming of diversity and difference that can come to be expressed through collective action.
But more than this, acknowledging and honoring the places within which such character forms, you come to understand the role the land and landscapes play in forming character. You come to understand how abundance and hardship reveal to yourself and others the need not to change the land and landscapes but to incorporate their uniqueness within yourself, to understand how protecting them teaches you how to protect yourself and others, that collectively the land and landscapes create societies to match the scenery. And you then come to understand how diversity and difference cannot be defined through arbitrary lines struck by men who know not the environment, or the sense people have of the place within which they reside, but instead reveal the subtleties that make us unique.
VII
A Way Forward
This is why in forging our new nation we must be both pragmatic and optimistic. We must involve the land and landscapes, and the environment of such more generally, unique as each is, diverse as all are, which is why the eco-cultural community naturally builds upon the notion of bioregionalism. Since the early 19th century, bioregionalism has struck a chord with environmentalists, planners, and historians. Interest has long been expressed even within the United States. Theorists in America referenced the notion as early as 1924, arguing the bioregion provided ‘the only way to understand patterns of American settlement and migration, of economic and political history, of architecture, literature, and social custom.’21 Even national committees studying such a framework supported those claims, by arguing in 1935 that ‘regional differentiation ... may turn out to be the true expression of American life and culture ... reflecting American ideals, needs, and viewpoints far more adequately than does [nation state] consciousness and loyalty.’22
Moreover, newer evidence now exists to suggest such a model also aligns with more
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